Thoughtful Thursday: Be A Blessing

This morning I woke up and had on my heart how I could be a blessing to someone today. I spent time talking and eating breakfast with my husband. I snuggled a two year old on a crazy sleep schedule. I was still thinking. I was still searching how to be a blessing. As I read my devotions, God started speaking to my heart.

I was being a blessing already. When you pour your life into someone else. When you show love and kindness you are being a blessing. By spending time eating breakfast and chatting with my husband I was showing him he was important. That I value the time we get to spend together even if it's early in the morning. I was blessing him and he was blessing me. I was blessing my daughter by snuggling. I was showing her she is important. She is worth the time. I was blessing her and she was blessing me.

You see, there is no need to do go around the world being a blessing. Yes, that is for some people. Some people spend their whole lives in other countries blessing the people of this world. It is not for everyone. How are you being a blessing. Are you blessing your spouse and your marriage? Are you blessing your children? What about the people you work with or strangers you pass? Are you being a blessing?

I know that yesterday I was far from a blessing. I let the negative start to my day run my house. I was short on patience and every one knew it. I am human and at the end of the day I had to ask forgiveness. I needed to look my children in the eye and say I am sorry for being crabby. I'm sorry that I was quick to anger and to punish. It was not one of my better days.

You can be a blessing in small ways, you can be a blessing in BIG ways. I encourage you to start at home today. Start in your marriage. How can you bless your spouse? Can you write a sweet note? Can you send an encouraging text? Can you buy flowers, candy, or a card? What about spending some time today just talking to your spouse without interruption? If we can start in our home, blessing those we are close to, we can be much better prepared to bless those we do not know. Those that may need us more then we know.

Be a blessing. Tell me what you did today to bless your marriage. I would love to hear from you! Let's make this world a better. Let's be a blessing.

Be blessed.

Dany

Vision Update

Well today was a busy day here at our house. Butterfly Girl had two therapy appointments for herself, and the older kids had the lady come that talks to them about having a sibling with special needs. Two of those happened at the same time. It was quite the busy morning.

We saw Physical Therapy first this morning. It was a pretty good visit. Butterfly Girl's large motor skills are getting better. She is army crawling which is good. She still doesn't sit up like she should. Her whole left side of her body is a good 60% weaker then the right side. This is why we need to get into neurology. We need to know what is causing her this problem. She doesn't really hold anything with her left hand. She will grab something and then drop it almost immediately. She just really struggles. Its so hard to watch.

Next we saw the VIT, which is our visual impairment teacher. She is super sweet. Although Butterfly Girl must have used all her vision for PT because our poor VIT didn't get any visual responses from her. We had a 0 minute vision response time out of 45. So frustrating because when she was here last time it was a 10 minute vision response time out 45. I need to remind myself that every day is going to be different. Every hour is going to be different. This is going to be the life we live with CVI.

We are doing a few things to try to increase the amounts of time she sees, but its not really helping. It is very hit and miss. Top that with how sensitive she is to sounds its hard to tell when she is seeing or not. Its even harder for others. I can tell by the way her eyes are shifted that she isn't seeing at that moment.

The big kids loved their appointment. They always do. It is so nice that someone will come to our House and shower them with attention. Its hard when you have a sibling with special needs (I know, I have one) because it can feel like all the attention is on them all the time. This lady comes to the house and does an art project with them. She reads to them. She talks to them about having a sibling with special needs. She talks about how we react to others and about how they feel. She teaches them that when they feel like they are getting left out the need to talk to mommy or daddy. Good, important lessons. We don't ever want to make our kids feel like Butterfly Girl's diagnosis is a burden on them. We don't ever want them to feel like they don't get the special attention they require just because she is blind. Sometimes it happens though. You get so caught up in a diagnosis that you easily forget that your other kids need you more then just to feed them. They want one on one quality time also.

I had a thought as we were sitting outside this afternoon. My baby, when she can see, doesn't experience the beauty of this earth the way we do. Even when she is seeing she doesn't have the best quality vision. This got me a little down. A little sad that she will never know the world to the beautiful extent that it has. She will never see the Lord's creation as it was intended to be seen. Then God send a slight breeze. Butterfly Girl smiled as the wind blew past her and I cried. She is experiencing the world in a far more intimate nature then those of us that see ever could. She feels every breeze, she hears every bird, she feels the crisp grass. Those things make her happy. Those things bring out the big smile she has. They bring the twinkle in her eye to the brightest it can go. Tears, yes, but happy tears. Tears knowing that she is not hindered by blindness. She will know the marvelous nature God has made and she will know its beauty, she will just know it on a different level then the rest of us.

I will have ups and downs for a lifetime. As normal as it seems now to know that her eyes aren't as they were intend and that she has thrown us the biggest curve ball we can imagine, I will still feel in shock some days. I will still feel sad about what she can not see. I just need to lean on my Heavenly Father for support. I need to lean on the prayers of friends and family.

Blessed are those who follow the path of the Lord. I will stick on his path. He knew we would see Butterfly Girl as a blessing. We just never knew how much she was going to be blessing us when we had her.


Break Down

I have been doing so well mentally and emotionally. I have been staying on top of what I know is important. My relationship with Jesus, with my husband, and then my children. I know that this makes me happy and less stressed. Well today I broke down. I just couldn't keep up the positive, non complaining, up beat attitude that I have been feeling lately.

You see. I like my house spotless. I like everything done in a certain order at a certain time in a certain way. I am very OCD. I am very type A personality and as funny as it sounds I was looking forward to my doctors appointment this morning. We were supposed to be scheduling surgery which in turn would allow me to use my knee that very same day as long as I could tolerate it. As I sat there waiting for the doctor he came in and said "I have good news and bad news" I immediately thought that it meant my tear was worse then he had first imagined and that it was going to take a longer recovery, but maybe he could do it yet today. I was very wrong. He proceeded to tell me that the bump her felt in my knee was not a meniscus tear. In face it was the muscle that holds the knee in place. He told me that I had dislocated my knee, that muscle was way to loose and was getting "bunched up". So now what I thought? How do we fix this? Well he told me and I didn't like what I was hearing. He had to re-dislocate my knee so that it could be in the correct healing position. Then I would be in this knee immobilizer and on crutches for the

At first I was handling this okay, but the day slowly drug on. Sitting in the car is hard. Going to the bath room is hard, and I cant just stand on it. I have to wear this thing twenty four hours a day seven days a week only to take it off to shower. This does not make me so happy. I hate asking for help. I hate not being able to do all my type A personality things. I just hate being laid up in general. I am always doing something. I always have a running list of things that need to be done.

This realization that I am going to need to count on others. That I am not going to get much on my to do list done. That I will be stuck in this thing for four weeks. Add that with the pain I am experiencing. Add that in with not a ton of sleep the past few nights and I lost it. Oh and my pop spilled every where. It was not a good thing.

I am telling myself that even though I want to complain every second of every day. Even though I want to just cry and throw myself a pity party doesn't make things better. God is in control! He has me taken care of. This was in his plan. This is his way of showing me something and I need to listen. I need to stay focused on his plan for me and for our family. I need to focus on how much he has given me. I have four amazing children. The best husband any one could ask for. The ability to write and share our families story.

Please continue to pray with us. Pray that my family can hold out on my sometimes short, sometimes snippy, crabby self while I deal with this inconvenience. Pray that this knee heals quickly. Pray that the next four weeks goes amazingly fast.

My Baby Girl

My baby girl is an amazing! She is a huge gift from God! Blindness will not tear our family down! We have a MOVER! Yes you read that right. Our baby girl is crawling, army style that is. It's amazing to watch her move, but so sad when she cries because she has run into an object that she can not see.

Butterfly Girl has what is called CVI, which means that she can see some times and other times she can not. We have noticed that for Butterfly Girl, her vision is not there more then it is. With CVI Butterfly girls vision can change minute by minute and day by day. This is difficult. I so badly want her to see 100% of the time, but that is not what God gave us. God gave us an amazing girl, full of smiles, with eyes that have an amazing hope in them, but can not see.

Butterfly girl is behind developmentally. She still isnt sitting great on her own yet. She is having some feeding difficulty. She doesnt really enteract with toys that she has in her hands. All of these things are due in part to her not being able to see. When I start to feel down about one of these things God goes and gives me the best gift of all. He reminds me of what she can do and then shows me something new!

I am over joyed by the blessing she has been in our life. The road traveled is long and hard, but the Lord rewards those who stay on his path. Please continue to stay with us on this journey. The Lord is guiding us to do great things for him. The Lord is calling our Butterfly Girl to use those beautiful blue eyes and amazing smile to do his good work.

Crazy things

Well, this life journey we are on is a crazy one. We never like to keep things dull around here. If it isn't enough that we own two buisness' and that my husband works a full time job on top of the one he owns, we decided to add another. This time we have added a not for profit organization. We are so excited to add Sole Aid to our family. Sole Aid was run by another family that we are friends with. They are having their 10th child and are feeling called in a different direction with ministry. We felt a strong calling to keep this ministry going and so we said YES! We are excited to be the hands and feet of Jesus by being a blessing in Michigan and around the world.

Sole Aid collects shoes and clothes that are the sold to an exporter and then shipped around the world to help those who need lost cost shoes and clothing. The money that Sole Aid makes through the selling of those clothes and shoes goes towards scholarships to help families here in Michigan and to help families around the world through different forms of aid. To find out more about this ministry please visit our website at www.soleaid.org There are a number of different ways to get involved. And if you don't live locally there is a way to give online donations.

To keep life even more interesting Sunday night I decided that it might be a great idea if I injured myself. Okay so that wasn't really the plan, but that is what happened. I hurt my knee while cleaning. I didn't think much of it as the pain slowly went away. While I was cleaning my sewing room later that day I heard one of the kids trying to get the door open to come back inside. It sounded like they couldn't get it so I stood up quickly and turned to go out of the room. As I did that my knee gave out. A few hours later after not being able to move it and being stuck to a chair I figured it would be best to go into the emergency room to have it looked at. The doctor there told me that I had a meniscus tear and that I would need to see an orthopedic doctor. Fast forward to today and that's exactly what I did. I saw the doctor and form the looks of it I have what is called a bucket handle meniscus tear. This will require surgery to fix. So by the end of next week I will be in the surgery room to have it repaired and shall be on the mend after that. I am excited to get this fixed so I can get off these crutches and back to things the way they were.

Please pray with us that my knee heals quickly. Also pray that our new ministry would be a blessing to those that need it most here in Michigan and around the world.

Pondering

Happily married, 4 perfectly healthy, well-behaved children, stay at home mother. Big beautiful house. Husband with decent money. Going on vacations. Sending my kids to a private school to get their educations. Having a nice car, pool in the backyard, and buying my children all their wants. This is how I envisioned my life when I was 15.

N

As I was siting with my husband tonight I pondered the past and the future. So many events in my life I have tried so hard to be in control of and have ended up far from that. I am very OCD. I like to have every minute of every day planned out. I like to have everything in its place. I like to have a list for everything. In the end I like to be in control, but it isn't as simple as just wanting to be in control. We can all want to be in control, but at some point we have to face the music that someone else will have control.

If we are an employee, the boss has a control. If we are a young child, the parent has control. The government has control of speed limits and much more. A principle has control of it's students. A dog owner has control over his or her dog. Eventually we fall into a category that we need to summit to someone higher up.

Much of my latter years of high school were spent trying to take back the control I felt I lost as a child when my parents divorced. I did many things that were against who everyone knew me as. They went against my character. I ended up married at 18, to someone I should have thought twice about before marrying. I could marry him despite my families disapproval because I could. I "loved" him despite the abuse I under went. I ended up pregnant shortly there after with my first born. I was going to control my relationship. I was going to "fix" my ex husband. I could do all those things. After the abuse got out of control, I left. I then continued to try to control my own life dating whomever I felt was okay. Trying to control who I saw and what I did. I ended up pregnant again. This was not how I was picturing my life. I did not picture being a single mother of two children 18 months apart at the age of 20. I needed to try to stop controlling my life. Instead I just tried to do it more.

Do not get me wrong. I still try to control the things I can such as my list making and scheduling out days, but I have learned through this journey with Kinsley I am not in control.

This life I am in is not how I had envisioned from the start. I have an amazing husband, we are happily married, but marriage is hard work. It takes a give and take relationship. It takes compromise. (something I am not good at) He is my best friend. He is my greatest cheerleader. He is the love of my life and I am truly blessed we have been brought together to spend our lives together.

I have 4 children. While they are all healthy in a sense I never in a million years would have dreamed I would have to deal with a child with disabilities. Although I have a strong heart for those with disabilities I never though I would have to parent a child that had limits in their ability to do life like a normal child. I was then blessed with my oldest who had some Austims tendencies, SPD, along with large motor and speech delays. I did my time. I could now have the rest of my children be healthy and without disability. I had my son and the our second daughter. Awesome healthy children. Growing up to be wonderful people. Then our world was rocked. We were given a child with more complicated disabilities. We were given Butterfly Girl. No vision. Healthy? Yes she is healthy, but it was not what we were expecting.

Right then we learned we were not in control of this life. Our Father up above was in control. He gave us a sweet baby girl with no vision. He knew we could handle it. I will admit there was a stage I went through that I tried to control everything. I tried to get her into the best doctors, the best places. I tried to get her therapy as fast as I could. Truth is, none of my urging made anyhing move any faster. God was in control and he had a list of the way things were going to happen. He had his schedule written out. It is amazing how fast you can realize you are not in control of your own life.

By giving over control to the One who has it in the first place has been very rewarding. Although some days I still wonder why we are on the road of life we are on I just trust. With following His lead in this life has been leading to so many rewarding opportunities for us. I wish I could spill all the beans! I wish I could tell you so much more.

As I sit here a few days before I turn 25, although my life is not how I had envisioned it 10 years ago it is amazing. God is blessing us ten fold. When you listen to your Master you are rewarded greatly. I am so glad he gave us our 4 children. I am so glad that he gave us a supportive group of family and friends. I am so glad that I am finally giving him all control. He does a much better job figuring out my life they I do.

Great Day

Today has by far been the best day I have had since Kinsley's diagonsis. I will no lie when I say it has been a hard road for me to travel and I needed to catch a break. I needed to just have one really, really good day. Today was the day.

I got to start the day by going to Crazy Bounce, a local bounce house. It was a blast. I got to bounce, climb up giant slides, and play like I was a kid again. My nephew beat me up in the bounce house that has the over sized boxing gloves. He wanted me to go every where with him. I loved it. I got to take my little ones all over to. Myla was not scared at all. She was off on an adventure and nothing was stoping her. My kids enjoy being there with their cousins and friends from church. Oh, I had a blast also! It was perfect.

After that we went back to my brothers house and ordered pizza. It was great. I came home to clean the house a bit before a lady and her daughter from our church came over. They came over to deliver the best present any parents could ever ask for. A NIGHT OF BABYSITTING!

Oh my word, they will never know the true blessings they were tonight. They will never understand how the timing of their request to babysit was the best timing ever. Kelly and I have been bearing the weight of so many things. Life is hard. I was blessed with their phone call on Monday. They wanted to offer us a night of babysitting at no charge. AT NO CHARGE! Oh my word how amazing. Babysitting for four kids costs a lot. We never go out unless we can find free sitters. This usually means unless our parents are willing to baby sit we stay home. Their offer brought me tears. I couldn't believe someone would want to help us out by watching all four of our children.

I so often feel like I am burdening other people by asking them to watch my children. It was my choice to have four after all. Although I can not help that Kinsley is blind it is a lot to ask someone else to take on that care.

They came right when they said they would. I gave them a tour of the house, changed the girls one last time before we left, and then headed out the door. Our  date night wasn't anything magical, sparkly, or fancy. It was perfect for us though. We went to dinner where we actually sat down and talked inside instead of going through a drive through some where. Then we ran errands without our four little bundles of joy in tow. Best part yet; they were all in bed and sleeping when we got home! This is huge! I love that I for one night got the break of struggling with them to get their jammies on or asking for just one more book or one more drink. I came home to peace and quite.

Before they left we were able to share life together. I showed them some of the things I have made. I showed them Ondrea's Easter dress. We talked about Kinsley being blind and this journey we are on as parents. How we feel we need to make each child in our family feel special. I am amazed at the faith and compassion this young girl has. She has a heart of gold. Her mother does too. I am beyond thankful for the two of them blessing us with the chance to spend time together as a husband and wife without having to be mom and dad at the same time. Before they left they prayed for us! This mom and her daughter prayed for us! Their words were so awesome. Just the prayers we needed to hear. I could feel the truth of their words and how badly they want our family to be blessed. I could hear in their hearts that even they know what we are experience is struggling that they truly want God to bless our family. It is huge. They listened while we were talking because they prayed speically about some of the things I had mentioned and that is awesome!

Please pray that they will continue to be blessed for being a blessing. Like I said; They will never truly understand the gift they gave us, they will never truly understand how perfect their timing was.